European Legal Method in Denmark and Sweden—Using Social Science Theory and Methodology to Describe the Implementation of EU Law

This article presents data from a study in which national bureaucrats working in the fields of taxation and food law in Sweden and Denmark are asked which legal sources and methods of interpretation they use when implementing EU law. The purpose is to contribute to the discussion about European legal method by using social science methodology. National agencies and authorities in the fields of taxation and food law face a ‘multilayered’ or ‘multiprincipal’ reality in which there is room for policy choices. The answers given by the interviewees speak of a plurality of legal sources, a situation where bureaucrats are becoming reluctant lawmakers instructing others on how EU law is to be applied and where bureaucrats find it necessary to found their decisions on what colleagues within the authority or from other Member States have said about how EU law should be applied.     

Social Roles and Legal Rights: Three Women in Early Nineteenth-Century India

In the early decades of the nineteenth century the small European societies in Madras (now Chennai) and Bombay (now Mumbai) were divided by disputes of such intensity that the authorities in London feared for the future of British power in India. The divisions were legal and social. In law, the Governors and the Supreme Courts of both cities contested the scope of their respective roles with the arguments focusing on the rights of Indians. Again and again, government took alarm at the ‘pro-Indian’ views of reforming judges. The debates were reflected in European social divisions, thereby making them all the more intransigent; legal allegiance became linked to social allegiance. It was this mixture of the legal and the social which gave the wives and other female relatives of the judges a role in the process of reform. Normally confined to multiple pregnancies and restrained social functions, the divisions in European life gave these women an opportunity to influence legal change. Without making official public statements they took part in the development of ideas about Indian rights.     

试论法律社会渊源的理论基础

在正式的法律渊源之外 ,还有大量的非正式法律渊源 (本文迳称为“法律的社会渊源”)的存在 ,这已是学术界普遍承认的事实。然而 ,为什么必须由社会渊源来弥补正式渊源的不足 ,其理论基础究竟何在 ,在法理上则很少有研究性的文章。为此 ,作者通过择取“自然与约定”、“理性与经验”、“国家与社会”三对范畴 ,论述了社会渊源存在的理论依据。作者的观点是 :法律的社会渊源是法律的理论与实践所必须 ,也符合法律与社会关系的一般原理 ,具有正当性与民主性基础     

The Legal Community: Judges, Lawyers, Officials and Clerks in the Writing of Europe

This article argues that EU legal studies whould pay more attention to the legal discourse that sustains the conceptions of law and legal politics underlying European law. Drawing loosely on Bourdieu's concept of 'legal fields', it offers a social and intellectual reconstruction of European legal thinking by way of empirical analysis of European legal writing. The article argues that the autonomy, technicality and specificity of European law should be seen at least in part as consequences of the social and professional structure of the community of EU laywers.     

Why Do Labour Lawyers Ignore the Question of Social Justice in European Contract Law?

Abstract: Over recent years, a heated debate about social justice in European contract law has been taking place. Great emphasis is placed on ideological assumptions. For example, the over‐individualistic interpretation of European private law, its market‐led orientation and the insufficient attention paid to the idea of the protection of the weaker party. This discussion considers the traditional conflict between the meta‐principles of market‐oriented efficiency and solidarity‐based action. The whole debate, it seems to me, now calls for a more rules‐based approach. In endeavouring to validate such an approach, this article starts by illustrating the various facets connected to the theme of ‘European contract law’. Then as a preliminary step, I shall briefly examine the question as to why labour lawyers have remained silent and take no part in the discussion on European social contract law. There is ample reason to believe that the contrary is necessary. It has been generally acknowledged that labour contracts are not outside private law—individual contract law in particular—and that it represents one of the most important examples of long term incomplete contracts. The idea of labour law as autonomous is dead and it appears simple to promote the reintegration of labour law into modern social contract law. In the context of the debate on European contract law, three different strategies can be envisaged to achieve this end. The first strategy tests the degree to which provisions under the contractual regime, not all of which are legally binding, effectively meet the needs of the weaker party in the contractual relationship, in terms of his/her security—what might for short be termed the social validity of the contract regime—(the Principles of European Contract Law, the EU rules affecting contract law, etc which are analysed and proposed in the various workshops that are currently examining them), from the specific point of view of labour law. A second strategy is to codify European or Community labour law. Lastly, another strategy is to introduce an intermediate category of long‐term social contracts. What makes this last trend particularly significant for the future is that today globalisation is progressively diminishing the income earned from labour contracts and in this sense creating insecurity. In a globalised economy, where levels of remuneration are lower than in the past, the individual's sense of security must be ensured also in the context of other social or long‐term contracts (outside the workplace), which enable people to obtain other sources of finance (such as consumer credit, for example), or to make arrangements necessary for living (such as tenancy contracts). A need exists for consumers to be granted similar rights to those which historically have been granted to workers. To take just one example: if the borrower under a consumer credit agreement loses his/her job for objective reasons, or falls ill and is therefore temporarily unable to pay the instalments under the agreement, why should there not be a mechanism which limits the credit‐providing institution from terminating the credit arrangement?     

A Manifesto for Social Europe

The European Union is still far from having social legitimacy. The issue is indicative of a huge uncertainty about Social Europe. What is it? What are the principles of social justice behind it? In our view, a new social constitution of the European Union is needed. Political democratisation must be accompanied by the foundation of a social Europe. We argue that were the IGC to combine the Charter of The Fundamental Social Rights of Workers with the Maastricht Protocol on Social Policy, inserting both into the TEU, it would lay the legal foundations for a dynamic European social constitution; a Social Europe dedicated to the combating of social exclusion and the maintenance of solidarity.     

The Paradox of American Critical Legalism

Duncan Kennedy's essay is a reprint from his recently published book. We hope to draw attention to Kennedy's work among students of European integration since we believe his analysis to be relevant both to the specific debate on the impact of European integration upon private law and to comparative legal study in general. European legal scholarship has only recently begun to examine the problems of private legal integration. The late appearance of private law in the integration arena is due to a primarily instrumental understanding and strategic use of law in the European market-building project: only once legal ‘barriers to trade’ were eliminated and national regulatory law replaced by Europeanised norms, did the degree to which the core institutions of ’private‘ law had been (indirectly) affected by the integrationist logic become apparent. Comparative legal research, however, has benefited from this awakening of interest. European Commission projects have widened the scope of and intensified comparative studies in Europe. Equally, experience gained from the ‘Integration Through (Public) Law’ project has led to a new private legal debate on the impact of national traditions, the concept of legal cultures and the social functions of private law. Accordingly, whilst Duncan Kennedy's deliberations on the history of American legal thought and the differences between American and European legal cultures are generally to be commended for their sensitive treatment of the specificities of the civil law system and the common law heritage, they are equally of particular topical concern since in addition to highlighting America's ‘utter faith and utter distrust in law,’ they also investigate the fundamentally different approaches adopted towards ‘the project law’ within each of the member states of the EU. If European private lawyers are to come to terms with the problems of integration and convergence, they must first tackle these deep-seated divergences between their own national legal cultures.     

European Law and International Regimes: The Features of Law Beyond the Nation State

Different forms of law are perceived of as possessing differing degrees of legal quality. A quality continuum suggests itself, running from 'high quality' national law, through to 'lesser quality' European law and to 'low quality' international law. This article seeks to explain the perceived differences in the quality of these laws with reference to legal theoretical perceptions of what it is that constitutes the law's quality. It argues that only a theory of law which identifies the core of the law's integrity as lying in its ability to act as a fulcrum between spheres of social and public discourse and the exercise of power can fully explain the divergence in legal quality between national, European and international law. With specific regard to the quality of European law, it concludes by arguing that it is weakened by its relative lack of social internalisation—in comparison with a higher degree of legal and political internalisation—within the European public.     

社会法的部门法哲学反思

社会法的产生机理、演化变革、功能发展、性质或本体、社会法问题代沟与制度需求、主要理论范式等深层次的反思性问题,应在部门法哲学意义上得到关注,应予以跨学科、批判性的研究。社会法的产生机理在于社会保护本能和社会理性,形成了本文所称的"市场化运动推之,社会保护运动挽之"的制衡关系。其性质为构成维系现代产权制度、经济秩序与保障社会权利之间的社会对价关系或新型社会契约。社会法相关的"问题代沟"理论具有广泛的解释力。中国同时面临三代社会法问题,制度需求强烈,应以全球正在探索的第三代社会法为主要资源,科学建构社会法;借鉴多学科理论范式建构社会法法哲学。     

The Social Movement Turn in Law

The rise of social movements in US legal scholarship is a current response to an age‐old problem in progressive legal thought: harnessing law for social change while maintaining a distinction between law and politics. This problem erupted in controversy around the civil rights–era concept of legal liberalism defined by activist courts and lawyers pursuing political reform through law. Contemporary legal scholars have responded by building on social science to develop a new concept—movement liberalism—that assigns leadership of transformative change to social movements to preserve conventional roles for courts and lawyers. Movement liberalism aims to achieve the lost promise of progressive reform, while avoiding critiques of legal activism that have divided scholars for a half‐century. Yet rather than resolving the law‐politics problem, movement liberalism reproduces long‐standing debates, carrying forward critical visions of law that it seeks to transcend.     

From the Field to the Courthouse: Should Social Science Research Be Privileged?

Social scientists need clarification about the extent to which the confidential aspects of their research are protected from compulsory disclosure in legal proceedings, and the extent to which they ought to be. Investigating the nature of social science research with an emphasis on researcher-participant relationships in ethnographic practice, I conclude that a qualified privilege would confer three major benefits on social science researchers: confidence that the government will not unnecessarily interfere with research, facilitation of improved researcher-participant relationships, and increased accuracy, thoroughness, and reliability of research data. I also discuss the development of privilege and confidentiality issues in practical research contexts through an examination of two criminal cases in which social science researchers refused to divulge the confidential information obtained in the course of research. Finally, I discuss the possible formulations of a scholarly research privilege. This is especially important because courts have cast social scientists as members of the larger community of academic or scholarly researchers with respect to these issues. Potential sources of protection include state journalist protection laws, federal common law, and federal statutory law. Evaluation of these sources and the case law to which they correspond suggests that developing common law privileges in state and federal jurisprudence is the most promising means of affording the confidential aspects of social science research legal protection. As researchers continue to press privilege     

The Fault of (European) Law in (Political and Social) Economic Crisis

It is a commonplace that the discipline of economics has contributed to the current crisis, above all, because economic methodologies are charged with fatally inflating debt risk, such that collapse was the inevitable result. But what might be said of the role of law within this constellation? Much ink has been consumed detailing legal shortcomings within regulatory regimes for the financial services. However, a full accounting has yet to be made of the broader fault which may also be attributed to the premises of modern and increasingly post-national law, especially as they coalesce with a broader abdication of political responsibility for crisis. This contribution begins this accounting, investigating the processes by which law has transformed itself into an economic technology within post-national regimes in its contemporary quest for material legitimacy. Above all, in its idolatry of the factual, law has itself become a power locus—especially within the European Union—that similarly pre-empts the politics within which social and economic stability might be defined and achieved.     

社会弱势群体法律保护问题论纲

保护与救济社会弱势群体是实现社会公正和法律实质正义的基本要求,是构建和谐社会的题中应有之义。虽然法律机制因其局限性而无法解决社会弱势群体利益需求的全部问题,但是法律机制在保护社会弱势群体方面不可或缺、不可替代。社会弱势群体法律保护的基本内容应该围绕权利宣言和权利保障展开,核心问题应该是在给人以机会、给人以能力、给人以物质帮助三个方面寻求制度努力。     

Reconfiguring Law: An Ethnographic Perspective from Botswana

Using two marital disputes, this article examines women's experiences in bringing legal claims regarding family property in Botswana. It highlights the ways women draw on diverse economic and social resources available to them through their differing positions within gendered social networks that shape daily life and affect the ability to access and manipulate a legal system incorporating Tswana customary law and European law. The divergent discourses among women and between women and men document how the administrative and theoretical separation of legal systems does not extend to people's uses of the law in arranging their own lives. This analysis challenges the formalist model of legal pluralism by demonstrating that legal arguments are constructed from the gendered social and economic facts of individuals'lives that traverse the legal categories of European and customary law. It also contributes to feminist legal scholarship by explicitly marking the links among gender, power, and law.     

被派遣劳动者社会保险权保障:必要性及法律规制

最新修订的《劳动合同法》充分回应了劳务派遣法律问题学术讨论达成的基本共识,但问题并未因此而得到一劳永逸的解决。被派遣劳动者的社会保险权利救济问题,不仅有利于解决劳务派遣被滥用的现实困境,也是劳动法与社会保障法衔接的关键,学界对此研究甚少。现有关于保护被派遣劳动者社会保险权利的法律规定,存在雇主责任制度失效、异地派遣滥用规制不足、社会保险费征缴主体责任缺失、工伤保险待遇支付责任分配不公等问题。只有跳出单一视角,通过民事规则的完善、行政救济的补足和刑事制裁的法律创新的公私法双重路径,才能实质有效地保护被派遣劳动者的社会保险权利,实现生存权保障和社会安全秩序的法益目标。     

A European Legal Method? On European Private Law and Scientific Method

This article examines the relationship between European private law and scientific method. It argues that a European legal method is a good idea. Not primarily because it will make European private law scholarship look more scientific, but because a debate on the method of a normative science necessarily has to be a debate on its normative assumptions. In other words, a debate on a European legal method will have much in common with the much desired debate on social justice in European law. Moreover, it submits that, at least after the adoption of the Common Frame of Reference by the European institutions, European contract law can be regarded as a developing multi-level system that can be studied from the inside. Finally, it concludes that the Europeanisation of private law is gradually blurring the dividing line between the internal and external perspectives, with their respective appropriate methods, in two mutually reinforcing ways. First, in the developing multi-level system it is unclear where the external borders of the system lie, in particular the borders between Community law and national law. Second, because of the less formal legal culture the (formerly) external perspectives, such as the economic perspective, have easier access and play an increasing role as policy considerations.     

试论我国社会法的基本范畴

社会法,是指调整国家和人民之间社会给付权利义务关系的法律规范的总称。社会法是在社会保障法的基础上发展起来,并超越了社会保障法的给付模式和给付水平。社会法在性质上属于公法,并且以社会给付为核心。我国社会法的体系宜分为“社会预防制度”、“社会扶助制度”、“社会促进制度”与“社会补偿制度”四大板块,这四大板块与社会给付程序法及社会救济法构成了一个有机的社会法体系。它们在维护社会安全、促进社会公正上发挥着相互衔接、互相补充的功能,并形成一张安全网,保障个人在遭受各种风险时的生存和发展机会。     

The Missing View of the Cathedral: The Private Law Paradigm of European Legal Integration

The traditional partition between public and private law continues to reinforce the belief that public law is the only proper realm of political debate, where decisions having redistributional consequences are and should be taken. This allows for a seemingly minor role of private law in the debate on European integration. This article challenges such a traditional image by noticing the central role of private law in the several legal systems of the European Union, and by analysing a few instances of resistance to private law integration. The analysis suggests that, while fully engaged in debating the public law implications of integration, Member States strive to keep civil adjudication within their control and to protect the self–contained, autonomous structure of their codes (or sets of private law doctrines) from the disruptive impact of European legislation. Integrationist pressures compel national legal actors to make explicit the social and economic choices underlying private law rules. Against such pressures, States' resistance may take the shape of formalist entrenchment.     

Employment Discrimination Law and Industrial Psychology: Social Science as Social Authority and the Co‐Production of Law and Science

This article combines Monahan and Walker's classification of social facts, social authority, and social frameworks with political‐institutionalism's view of law and science as competing institutional logics to explain how, and with what consequences, employment discrimination law and industrial‐organizational (I‐O) psychology became co‐produced. When social science is incorporated into enforcement of legislative law as social authority—rationale for judicial rule making—law's institutional logic of relying on precedent and reasoning by analogy ensures that social science will have ongoing influence on law's development. By helping set research agendas and providing new professional opportunities, institutionalized legal doctrine shapes social science knowledge. But because of differences in institutional logic, wherein legal cumulation is backward looking whereas scientific cumulation is forward looking, co‐production of law and science may produce institutional mismatch between legal doctrine and scientific knowledge.     

社会保障法概念探析

本文通过对社会保障的概念与法的概念、社会保障的本质与法的本质、以及现有社会保障法的概念的全面分析 ,对社会保障法进行了重新定义。本文认为 ,社会保障法 (广义社会保障法 )是关于基于社会理性、为保证每一个人的生活安全、维持基本生活并保证生活质量从而保证其生存权和发展权而采取的社会互助行为的法律规范的总称 ,包括社会救济法、社会保险法和社会福利法三个次级法律规范群 ;狭义社会保障法是关于基于社会理性、为保证每一个人的生活安全、维持基本生活从而保证其生存权和发展权而采取的社会互助行为的法律规范的总称 ,包括社会救济法和社会保险法两个次级法律规范群。